


The Thaw

by titC



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Elektra kills, F/M, Fighting, Gen, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:40:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25993039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titC/pseuds/titC
Summary: So, this is it,Matt thinks as he tries and fails to get to his feet after his fall.This is how it ends.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Elektra Natchios
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Daredevil and Defenders Exchange 2020, Mattelektra Bingo.





	The Thaw

**Author's Note:**

> Written for FunkyBetsy's prompt [A Reason To Fight, by Disturbed](https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/disturbed/areasontofight.html).
> 
> Fits my MattElektra Bingo prompt _falling down a manhole_ and my BadThingsHappen Bingo prompt _twisted ankle._
> 
> Big thanks to [PixelByPixel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PixelByPixel/) for the Beta ♥ !

_So, this is it,_ Matt thinks as he tries and fails to get to his feet after his fall. _This is how it ends._

He’s always known it was coming, from the first time he put on the mask, and overall he doesn’t regret choosing to use his skills to help however he can. He isn’t looking forward to dying underground, but then again maybe it means no one will ever find him, or if they do he’ll be decomposed enough he won’t be recognizable as Daredevil, even if they ID his rat-eaten remains as Matt Murdock’s. Foggy would be safe; the firm would be safe. A blind lawyer attacked in the streets, the body hidden in the sewers… believable.

He just has to face his fate, now, and he’ll do it on his own two feet, twisted ankle notwithstanding. He knows they’re coming after him, and he’s not going to go down easy.

She hears the crash and muffled shout of pain, scraping sounds, then more thumps. Her hunt’s being disturbed, and she’s not happy. She takes her blades out of their sheaths, the quiet slide of metal on leather familiar and pleasing to the ear, and stalks closer to the disturbance. If she can’t get her mark today, she can still spill some blood. She doesn’t remember much about who she is, but this she remembers: she is someone who kills.

 _Black Sky_ , she remembers. Weapon. Death.

She chooses who she goes after and from time to time accepts contracts when she deems the designated target deserves to meet their maker. (There is no maker, she knows. She faced death twice and came back each time, and there was nothing. No one. Death couldn’t hold her.) Today, her prey is a man who’s built an empire on selling people, their work, their bodies, their lives. An enemy of his, a well-connected underworld queen, hired her and congratulated herself on getting rid of her business rival, but she doesn’t know the assassin she’s paying will be going after her soon enough, too. She’s just a hitwoman taking blood money, and why wouldn’t she? It’s offered it so nicely.

She likes using the underground accesses when she’s working; there are never any cameras and it’s easy to move around most cities unseen, that way. Sewers if she has too, but also car parks, transportation tunnels, storm drains, catacombs, basements, heating systems or cooling vents, shop storerooms or service backdoors; just now, she’s managed to find and take down most of this building’s video feeds. (Only one man in the camera room; how boring.) New York’s underground world is easy to navigate, and she doesn't fear anything that she could meet here. She doesn’t fear much, really.

There are, however, annoyances.

She flattens herself against damp brick and peers around the wall. A man, dressed in black and with fabric over most of his face – _another one of those New York wannabe heroes,_ she thinks with a sigh – is raising fists wrapped in rope in front of himself. He’s clearly favouring his left leg, no, ankle; she’s pretty sure the other people who’ve just jumped down after him through the open manhole haven’t missed that either.

She doesn’t know any of them; she doesn’t follow local news, whatever her current locale is. She lives everywhere and nowhere, and so doesn’t care about the particulars of anywhere. However, she recognizes the jackets the men are wearing: they work for her mark. He’s got his own dedicated security guards and this limping imbecile has managed to lure them all here, which means the way to her target is clear, or at least clearer than she’d planned for.

She doesn’t like it when things are too easy – there’s no fun in it, no challenge. This guy, she thinks, loves a challenge. Blood is seeping from under his mask and tinting his teeth red, but he’s grinning. He’d be a kindred spirit, if she ever allowed herself to miss an open manhole and hurt herself in the fall.

She watches for a moment, enjoying the show. He slams his bad leg’s knee in a stomach and goes down, elbow first, on that first guy’s neck; he falls with him but it’s a feint and he trips another knife-wielding man then goes for the windpipe when he’s got him on the ground. He wrenches the knife free and throws it at a third opponent before rolling away from a hail of bullets. He ends up backed against the wall, but he manages to dislodge a brick and throw it at the gun firing at him, unerringly accurate in the dim light from the street above and the flickering torchlight one man dropped before joining the fight. She can’t help but smile, the stretch of her lips unfamiliar when she’s not in the middle of a fight, her heart pumping and her lungs burning.

But there’s a fire in that man, something she’s rarely seen apart from within herself. He doesn’t get back on his feet; the ankle probably can’t hold his weight, and she’s feeling… something. She finds she’s rooting for him, in a way; she doesn’t remember ever rooting for anyone but herself. But this man… He knows he’s outnumbered, but he’s not begging, not trying to escape. Perhaps, she muses, he could have taken them all if he hadn’t been hurt.

But he is, and she winces when one of the security henchmen slams a piece of rebar on his injured leg. There’s a loud crack and the man screams, but still he fights. He goes for the rebar, does some fancy technique that reminds her of hanmi hantachi waza she must have studied once, and throws the guy down. But for all his stamina and determination, he’s losing. There are half a dozen guys, and he’s killed none of them – not because he never had the opportunity, but more because he actively avoids it. And while they’ve been toying with him, they’re getting tired of the hard time he’s giving them. They've all got guns, and he won’t be able to dodge all those bullets.

And she doesn’t want him to die.

So the initial plan of standing on his own two feet turned into hopping on one pretty quickly, since _maybe_ the ankle is worse than twisted.

It doesn’t matter; he’s a Murdock. Maybe he won’t get back up this time, but he’ll go down swinging until the end: he knees the guy closest and uses him as a shield once he’s elbowed him down to the ground; when knife-guy tries to get him Matt swipes his feet from under him with his good leg and takes his knife just in time to stop another one in his tracks. He hears a gun safety being clicked off and rolls away to avoid getting shot, but as he’s running his fingers along the brick wall at his back, he knows he's only delaying the inevitable. He can feel something wet and warm on his side; there’s no pain but he’s hit. He has no idea how badly.

 _They’re gonna get me,_ he thinks. _I’m sorry, Fogs, Maggie…_ he sends a quick prayer for all the people he’s letting down, except Stick: he’s definitely letting that old asshole down if he lets a broken ankle be the end of him, but _he’s_ dead and also an asshole.

He finds he doesn’t mind dying really, now: what he really regrets is what he’s leaving unfinished, all the people he won’t be here to help anymore. He throws himself on his stomach just before his skull is turned into Swiss cheese, a reflex more than a will to live, and feels strangely detached from everything, his life and death inconsequential in the grander scheme of things. He hears a shout and realizes it’s him, dimly feels something throbbing down there on his leg. _This is the end,_ he thinks. He acts on autopilot, no conscious thought in his movements: he grabs whatever it is they hit him with, and muscle memory does the rest. But then the metal rod falls from his lax fingers, and he can feel grit digging into his cheek.

He’s chill. No, _chilled_. Cold. His fists are too heavy to lift now, and he wonders if he’ll see any light soon. That tunnel people talk about; it sounds nice. All the people he’s missed for so long, welcoming him… he’d like to see his dad’s face again. He’ll have sight again in death, he just knows it. The smell of blood gets stronger all of a sudden; he’s dying. He’s dead.

It’s quiet.

“Don’t you dare,” someone says. It’s not one of the guys; it’s a woman. Where are the men? He can’t hear their heartbeats anymore. There’s cool air on his face, his forehead; his mask is off.

This is not death.

It smells like too much blood to be only his, but everything hurts. He’s still badly injured, and there’s a woman who’s feeling for his wounds and tying something – he screams.

“Don’t be a baby,” she says. “That ankle needs a splint.”

“Who,” he breathes out.

“Not now.”

He realizes she’s removed the ropes from one of his hands and has a strong suspicion the metal bar holding his ankle straight(ish) is what broke it in the first place. He smiles at the irony and reaches out his naked hand to touch her.

She’s freezing. Cold as a corpse, although he can feel the blood moving under her skin and hear the air filling her lungs. Her skin is like marble, hard and leaching heat from his fingers. It is, also, strangely familiar.

“Stay awake. Don’t you d-”

Her voice fades out, and everything else too.

The man is – not quite warm, he’s lost too much blood for that, but warmer than she feels. She’s always cold. But for now he needs first aid; she found several stab wounds and a bullet got through his thigh. He’s somehow managed to minimize the damage by twisting and turning to get hit in muscle rather than bone or big arteries, as if he knew exactly where he could take damage and where the blades and bullets would hit. She knows she can do the same, but that is a very rare skill, and he didn’t avoid everything. Some injuries are more serious than others, and the sheer number of them is enough to be concerning.

She’s just ended seven men’s lives in a few seconds for this man, and he’s not going to die. They’re just below her mark’s place of residence: several floors at the top of a very expensive building. They’ll get upstairs and find his medical supplies. A man like him has to have a lot of it in stock, just in case. She hefts the unconscious man over her shoulders and makes for the stairs, then the service lift. The badge she took from one of the men she just killed is enough to reach the penthouse, and she lets the man slide down so she’s ready to fight when the doors open.

But the place is empty; there are no security guards around. Maybe she got rid of all those on duty tonight, which doesn't say much for their professionalism. Even if their employer wasn’t supposed to be home before the early hours of the morning, there should always be someone here, in case someone like her came in.

Amateurs.

But for once, she will appreciate not having to fight; it means she’s not wasting time dispatching small fry. She picks the man up again and finds the infirmary, lays him down on the cot there, and starts rifling through the cabinets. She rarely needs much herself, but she learned the basics, long ago. Before she woke up, without an identity but with all her deadly skills, in a white room much like this one, surrounded by people looking at her like she was a terrifying weapon.

“You belong to us,” one of them said. “We have taken over from the Five, and you, the Black Sky, will work for us.” She snapped her restraints and killed them all, and left their bodies as warnings for whoever would think of tying her to any master.

She belongs to no one but herself.

She puts an IV in his arm, finds all-purpose antibiotics and electrolytes and O- blood; she sets his ankle while he’s still unconscious and splints it again before cleaning his other wounds and sewing up the worst ones.

She’s quick, but he still wakes up before she’s done. It is, she supposes, a good sign for him, albeit an inconvenience for her.

“Keep still,” she says.

“You… here. How?” His voice is weak, but urgent.

“I took the lift.”

He fumbles around until he finds her wrist, hovering above the last knot she’s made on his stomach. “The men,” he manages.

“Dead. You interrupted my job, but in doing so you drew all of Dessaint’s security out. I repaid you by killing them and getting you up here.”

“Dead?” he whispers. “No…”

She looks up at his face and clamps down on her reaction; his gaze startled her. He’s not seeing her; he’s not seeing anything. His eyes are unfocused, vaguely aimed in her direction but not quite; the pupils are too wide given the bright lights in the room. Could be the drugs or the blood loss, but he’s not even blinking or trying to shade his eyes. No: he’s blind. “Be grateful I didn’t kill _you_.” It hits her that she never even considered it. Is she getting soft? This can’t do.

But he smiles, looking very sure of himself in spite of his overall rather sorry state. “You wouldn't.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“You never did. Before.”

She drops the needle she was holding and almost swears out loud. She’s more on edge than she should be; this man is getting under her skin somehow and she’s letting him. She _should_ have killed him; he’s a liability and –

“Elektra,” he says, and this time there’s pure joy on his face.

For a brief, white-hot moment, she thinks of burying the scissors she’s holding into his chest. Stabbing his heart, his face, everything that makes him _him_. She hurts, he makes her hurt, and she doesn’t know why or how or who but she needs to fight back.

But then she hears the lift move andthat’s her cue: Dessaint is coming back. Cold resolve fills every corner of her deadly self, and she pushes him down on the cot as she takes her blade out. The man catches her sword hand and shakes his head, but she swiftly moves to lean the point of her short sword against his Adam’s apple. She draws blood, just a drop, but he only smiles. He looks like he’s won, although she could kill him with just a twist of her hand.

She doesn’t understand him.

She strides out of the infirmary and stalks Dessaint until she is standing right behind him in his own home; he’s pouring himself a drink and hasn’t even realized she’s there. He’s a bit drunk, but not drunk enough he should be this careless. She doesn’t like killing people this way; she always wants her prey to look her in the eye – oh, but she can’t kill the man she’s just left on the cot; he can’t look her in the eye, can he? – and know who is taking their life. If asked, she’d say it’s professional courtesy; as it is, she knows seeing the realization their end has come makes her blood sing.

She waits until he turns, and shows her teeth when he jumps and his tumbler shatters on the wooden floor.

“You!”

She nods, twirls her sword, and drops it when something hits her shoulder and numbs her entire arm. The injured man is leaning against the wall and panting, sliding down inch after inch. He’s just thrown a bookend at her, and he looks very pleased with himself. She’s going to end him; first Dessaint but he’s next.

But Dessaint’s trying to escape; after a moment of motionless shock, he’s aiming for the lift. Another bookend gets him in the knee and he stumbles and falls face-first; the injured man crawls to him and takes him in a chokehold.

“He’s mine.” No one kills Dessaint but her.

“I’ve got questions for him.”

“I’ve got death.” It’s all she has, for everyone; it’s all she is. She shouldn't forget that, ever. She’s feeling it again now, death filling her and looking for a way out to spread all around her. Dessaint’s next. He’ll appease the bloodlust, for a short while.

“You don’t have to kill.”

“This is who I am.”

“No, it’s not. I know it’s not; I know you. I know there’s good in you.”

She looks at Dessaint’s reddening face; he’s choking but it’s not enough. He’s an idiot; if only he moved his hand he could dig his fingers in the very obvious splint on the injured man’s leg. But he’s passive, not even fighting for his life beyond trying to budge the arm around his throat. She wants him dead. He must die. She is death.

“Don't let it take your soul,” the injured man says. “Look at me, take control. This is not you, Elektra.”

Is that her name? It’s the second time he’s said that. “I am death,” she tells him. “I am the Black Sky.”

His face crumples for an instant, before determination sets back in. “No. You are Elektra Natchios, and you are alive.”

Finally, Dessaint grows a spine and digs an elbow in a wound she’s just sewn up; the chokehold releases just enough he wriggles out and dives away, back from them. “I’ll kill you, bitch!” he rasps. His hand goes under his jacket and he gets a gun out, points it at the injured man’s head. “I’ll kill you both, in fact.” He won’t have to move his hand to hit her once he’s put a bullet in the man’s skull.

Something snaps in her.

Her blood boils, heat spreads all through her body, her mind; she’s not death: she’s rage. She’s fury, she’s burning anger and she’s got a target.

There’s a thump and Dessaint’s head rolls away from his body. It crumples like a broken doll and she catches the gun before it falls and, perhaps, goes off. She makes sure the safety is on before putting it on the shelf to her right, then looks down at the injured man. He’s covered in Dessaint’s blood; it’s dripping from his hair and running in rivulets on his cheeks, his torso. She frowns; she doesn’t want it to get in his wounds. He looks shell-shocked.

“Come, we should wash that off,” she says.

“Why did you do that?”

“He was about to kill you.” The argument feels familiar.

“But – your soul…”

“I don’t have one. Your life shouldn’t be squandered for a worthless one.”

“You _have_ a soul! I felt it; I felt it leave your body when you… when you…” He chokes on his words, and his eyes are not empty anymore. They’re full of tears, big, fat tears that spill over and leave clean streaks on his face. She wants to go to him, but she can’t. She can’t give him what he needs; she’s cold and she’s death. He’s warmth and he’s life. She doesn’t know what to do with all these… feelings, there for all to see. He’s not ashamed of them, and she marvels at that.

Beyond him, she can see the first hints of the morning; the sky is lightening up.

“What is your name?” she asks. “You know mine. I think I should know yours, but it’s just…” Her fingers make a grasping motion.

“You know me,” he says. “You know all of me, you just have to remember.”

She looks away from him. Does she? Does she know him? She feels like she does, but it’s all just out of reach. His body is familiar, his eyes and his smiles and some, but not all, of the scars. _Elektra_ , he called her. _Ellie_. Someone else, another voice, called her Ellie. The two are linked, somehow. She takes a deep breath and opens her mind, lets in whatever wants to come. She thinks, maybe, it’s all been scratching at the door, outside in the cold, for a long time.

It’s a dizzying rush, but when it all settles in her mind, she opens her eyes and says, “Matthew.”

And his smile outshines the sun rising behind him.


End file.
